fish in cycle, cloudy water?

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

yes, somewhere around a 50 - 60% pwc every 2 -3 days, and I dose the aquarium volume with prime when I do the water changes.

I have changed filters last week, but i took all of the media from the old filter and have put it into the new filter.

what bothers me is not knowing if anything is happening or not, I could be on the verge of it flipping over or I could be the same place i was on day one, since there has been zero change it is real hard to tell what is going on.

 

[Sebastienb]

Could it be your testing materials ? Try taking a sample to a pet store

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

I am using the API freshwater master kit with an expiration date at the end of 2015 so I don't think it is my testing kit.

I will probably take a sample to the LFS Just to see what they have to say, something has to be going on.

 

[Coz]

Took me 3 weeks to get any nitrites. Now its been 3 more and they still havent zerod. Be patient

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

Yea ill hang in there. This Saturday it will be 4 weeks fish in, at what point should i become concerned if things keep going the same?

 

[Coz]

Test your tap water. API measures total ammonia. Enjoy your pwc every 2-3 days. Once nitrites show up you will be doing them every day

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

quick update, sitting at 4 1/2 weeks into my fish in cycle atm, ammonia showing between .50 and 1 ppm, zero nitrites, and zero nitrates.

thinking about getting 1 bottle of the tetra safe start with biospira to throw in there to see if that gets things moving, I hear this is the one brad that actually works to some extent,

I am not really sure what is going on, I was expecting to see some sort of change by now.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

So I went into my LFS today to Inquire about my cycle, the lady there and I talked about several things one of which really stood out to me and I had to ask about,

She said recently (with in the past few months) they started adding chloramine to the water, that it is basically ammonia + chlorine and in order to treat it I would need to dose my water with prime at 4 to 5 times the recommend dose.

Is this information solid? Just seems kind of suspect to me, though maybe if true could explain the trouble I am having.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

So after doing some research and looking into chloramine and prime I found this http://www.seachem.com/support/forums/showthread.php?t=3511

Apparently depending on what your concentration of chloramine is in the tap water that prime will only remove less than half using it at the strength listed on the prime bottle.

Since my water does have chloramine and I have been following the prime bottle directions, could this be causing trouble?

Should I be dosing more prime? Tomorrow I am gonna call my local water company and find out exactly what the amount of chloramine in the tap water is.

Anyone who knows about this kind of thing who could give me some insight it would be greatly appreciated

 

[Coz]

Interesting thread but either way its not really affecting your cycle. Add some liquid bacteria. It wont hurt.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

so after doing some in depth research I found out that if you do not shake the heck out of the nitrate bottle number 2 in the api test kit you can get false readings, then it occurred to me I have actually shook them very little, so I shook the bajebus out of all of the bottles and ran my water peramaters again.

ammonia .25 - .50 ppm
nitrites 0
nitrates between 20 and 40 ppm

then I ran a test on my tap water for nitrates and it was somewhere between 10 and 20 ppm,

the first picture is my ammonia and aquarium nitrates.

the second picture is my aquarium nitrates on the left and tap water nitrates on the right.

does this mean that my cycle is indeed under way?

as always, thoughts / help / advice / input is GREATLY appreciated.

 

[Old Scales]

Every new tank I ever saw going through its cycling clouds up as the bacteria establish and colonize the filter, water, & surfaces. It is very normal. It should look like you added a little milk to the water. If it gets so cloudy you can see the back of the tank, then you got a problem and need to find out what. The cycle really can't get started without the ammonia from the fish waste. Ammo is the first step of the nitrogen cycle. Once the tank is cycled and you don't have it too crowded, the water should get very clear. Time for this to happen depends but can be from 3 weeks to 8 weeks. Do some internet research about the nitrogen cycle and you will feel alot more confident about it.
Good luck, OS.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

Yeah, the cloudiness has cleared up, now just trying to figure out where I am in my cycle.

I am still showing around. 50 ppm ammonia, no nitrites, but I am showing Nitrates, I have about 5 to 10 ppm Nitrates in tap and showing about 40 un the aquarium.

Does this mean the cycle is finally under way? Is it normal to completely skip the nitrites phase?

 

[Old Scales]

If you still have ammonia but very little nitrites then you still may not be cycled yet. You should see ammo first, then one type of BB convert this to nitrite. Then, with nitrite to work with, the other type of BB will oxidize the nitrite into nitrate. When this happens your ammo and nitrite should drop to almost zero. Small ammo spikes will occur as you do things, ie add fish, clean filters, etc. but should not last more than 24 to 36 hrs. Your nitrates right now are probably carry over from your tap water and slightly increase from evaporation AND remember left over fish food also adds nitrates, especially flake food.
It's possible your tank has cycled and the 50ppm of ammo is from a temporary spike. Test daily and see if the ammo goes down soon. Hope this helps. OS.

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

5 weeks into trying to cycle Mt tank, I had some small amount of Nitrates show up ( see pics above) and thought maybe cycle was underway so held off doing water changes a few days, as of today my ammonia is up to between 1 and 1.5 ppm.

What is going on here? Is it supposed to take this long with fish in tank and not have the cycle even start? What could be stalling it out so bad?

This is getting really concerning and frustrating, I imagined being done by 5 weeks not waiting for it to begin.

 

[Coz]

Any nitrites yet?

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

Nope, zero nitrites the entire time, got some Nitrates, think it's carry over from tap water and food in the tank.

5 weeks of ammonia, not seen nitrite number 1

 

[sbruce75]

saturday night I added 4 danios as well as some jungle start zyme to my tank to start my fish in cycle, sunday morning the water was crystal clear, as of today it is cloudy / hazy looking, as I said in another thread my fish havent eaten yet, and i tried to feed them 2 or 3 times so there was some uneaten food in the tank so yesterday I did a 25% PWC and gravel vacing to get rid of the excess uneaten food but it hasnt changed anything.

is this normal part of cycling a tank? is there something I should be doing? will this go away as the cycle completes?

here is a picture of the tank sunday morning, and how it looks today.

any help / advice would be GREATLY appreciated.

Buy some Algone. Get it at Algone.com

 

[Coz]

Ph? What are you using to treat your water when you do pwc?

 

[ZombiesAteMyDog]

Last time I tested the ph it was right around 7.5 - 8, I'll check it again today, as for treating my water I use prime at the recommend dose, I was told that since we have chloramine in our water I should be using 4 to 5x as much which seems odd